This session highlights integrative paleoclimate research on the climate of the past 2000 years. We invite presentations that give an insight into data syntheses, quantitative temperature and hydroclimate reconstructions from local to global scales, novel approaches to producing multi-proxy climate field reconstructions, and contributions critically addressing non-climatic influences on proxies used in climate reconstructions. We also welcome abstracts on high-resolution ocean reconstructions (SSTs, salinity, ocean circulation) or integrating both marine and terrestrial data.

A particular temporal focus is set on the Dark Ages period. The Dark Ages refer to the timespan between the Late Roman period and High Middle Ages in Europe (AD 300-800). It is characterised by climatic deterioration and political instability during the transition from the classical to the medieval world.

This session also encourages participation of presentations of new external forcing reconstructions or assessment, and discussion of existing ones as well as analysis of transient climate simulations, model-data comparison, proxy system modeling, proxy-data assimilation, and detection-attribution assessments.

On October 13th 2015 the third annual meeting of The Dark Age of the Lowlands in an interdisciplinary light project was held at the Regentenzaal in Utrecht. These meetings are intended to communicate results of the project and to receive feedback from a wide range of specialists from various disciplines; archaeologists, historians, palaeobotanists and physical geographers. During the morning session, three invited speakers presented their research; Dana Riechelmann (Mainz University) gave a review of climate proxy records from North-western Europe, Willem van der Bilt (Bergen University) presented a new climate record from Svalbard and Marieke van Dinter (Utrecht University) demonstrated her new results of the palaeogeographical development of the river Rhine around Utrecht. Then, the three PhD students in the project (Rowin van Lanen, Harm Jan Pierik, Marjolein Gouw-Bouman) presented their newest results on modelling route networks and persistence, landscape reconstructions and vegetation reconstructions for the Late Roman Period and the Early Middle Ages respectively. The afternoon session consisted of two workshops one on the landscape reconstructions and another on vegetation reconstructions in which the invitees were asked to their feedback both on the compiled maps and the followed methodology. This resulted in lively discussions and useful suggestions for the continued research within the project.

Welcome to our brand new website on the research project: The Dark Age of the Lowlands in an interdisciplinary light: people, landscape and climate in the Netherlands between AD 300 and 1000. Here you can find more (background) information on our research activities and products.